Active Moravian burial ground in continuous use since 1771, where identical flat markers erase rank in death and the grave of Salem's most famous ghost anchor the Old Salem ghost-tour circuit.
626 S Church St, Winston-Salem, NC 27101
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to visit; the cemetery is publicly accessible as an active Moravian burial ground.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Level cemetery grounds on grass and gravel paths adjacent to Old Salem historic district.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1771 · Moravian congregation burial ground in continuous use since 1771 · Flat identical markers reflect Moravian theology of equality in death regardless of social rank · Members buried chronologically in gender and marital-status sections, not family plots · Site of one of the oldest continuous Easter Sunrise Services in the United States · Burial place of Andreas Kremser (d. 1791), source of Old Salem's most documented haunting tradition
God's Acre — the Moravian term for a congregation's burial ground, used at Moravian settlements worldwide — was established in Salem, North Carolina in 1771, three years after the congregation formally moved from Bethabara to the newly planned settlement of Salem. The Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination founded in fifteenth-century Bohemia, organized its settlements around the principle that the community held collective authority over property and daily life; this communalism extended to burial practice.
The cemetery's defining feature is its insistence on equality in death. Every grave marker in God's Acre is a flat white sandstone slab of identical size and shape, inscribed only with the name and dates of the deceased. No monument, mausoleum, or elaborated stone marks a wealthy member's grave differently from a tradesman's or servant's. Members are interred in sections organized by gender and marital status — single men, single women, married men, married women, children — in chronological order of death, not by family plot. This practice, called the choir system, reflects core Moravian theology about the equality of souls before God.
The cemetery remains active; Moravian congregation members are still buried there more than 250 years after its founding. The Easter Sunrise Service held at God's Acre each year is one of the oldest continuous Easter observances in the United States, drawing congregants and visitors who fill the cemetery before dawn for a service of brass music and scripture.
Andreas Kremser, buried in God's Acre in 1791, became the subject of Salem's most persistent haunting legend within decades of his death. Kremser emigrated from Germany to serve the Moravian congregation; local tradition holds that he was known for wearing a distinctive red coat, earning him the nickname 'the Little Red Man.' His apparition, described as a small figure in red, became the most frequently reported presence in the Old Salem historic district.
Sources
Salem's most persistent ghost story traces back to this cemetery. Andreas Kremser emigrated from Germany to serve the Moravian congregation in Salem and died in 1791; his grave is among the flat uniform markers in God's Acre. In the decades after his death, accounts circulated of a small figure in a red coat appearing on the streets of Old Salem, in doorways, and occasionally inside homes and congregation buildings. The figure came to be called the 'Little Red Man,' identified in the tradition as Kremser's ghost returning to his community.
The Kremser legend is distinctive among Southern ghost traditions in its longevity and specificity: the identifying detail of the red coat, the connection to a documented grave and documented historical person, and the geographic concentration of sightings within the boundaries of the original Salem settlement give the story a coherence that distinguishes it from more diffuse haunted-location traditions. Ghost-tour operators in Winston-Salem consistently route through God's Acre specifically to mark Kremser's burial plot as the origin point of the sightings.
The cemetery also carries the generalized atmospheric weight that Moravian burial practice produces: the rows of identical flat markers, the silence between them, the knowledge that over 250 years of community deaths lie beneath the grass in a space still used for the same purpose today. No significant modern paranormal-investigation documentation has been located in available sources; the Kremser tradition is a historical oral record rather than a contemporary investigation archive.
Notable Entities
Walk among 250-plus years of Moravian burials, where identical flat sandstone markers record every member of the congregation regardless of wealth or station. The grave of Andreas Kremser — the so-called 'Little Red Man' — is the most visited single marker in the cemetery.
US Ghost Adventures and other operators include God's Acre as a stop on their Winston-Salem ghost tours, covering the Kremser burial and the folklore of Old Salem's haunted history.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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